1,944 karma · joined March 27, 2013
Same for Uber/Lyft, but they really tried to earn a good review while still providing a pretty unpleasant experience.
Renting an apartment and owning a home have so many differences that it doesn't make much sense to compare the two.
Many people seem to assume they'll be moving every few years, but if you want to stay in the same place for life the equation looks very different. I hope to be done paying the mortgage around the same time I'm too old to work for a living, and if that lines up it's a pretty big win on the own instead of renting side.
Some seem to think that math is somehow above plumbing, but modern society couldn't exist without both, and I'd argue that modern plumbing is more critical to our health and well being than modern math.
In the recording on this one [1] the caller states that the payphone is on the caltrain station platform, but on the map it's about 1000 feet from there. Searching the address on google maps correctly shows it at the station, though.
eta: found it on street view! [2]
Having a kid is just an unfathomably large commitment. If you bring a kid into the world, I believe you're responsible for creating the conditions where that kid can grow into a healthy, well adjusted adult, and that's seemed like an increasingly impossible commitment for the past few decades.
A mortgage may be more than rent for a similar place now, but I suspect it won't be that many years before the lines cross.
I'm not an expert on the topic, but I don't think it's a reach to think that they might have engineered this situation.
Something seems really off to me about different kids within a couple hundred feet of each other getting drastically different quality of food.
I'm not criticizing people in that situation. Many people close to me wouldn't have a chance no matter how thrifty they were.
This is not some "revealed preferences" situation either. Something very harmful is happening, and it's not easy to see exactly what it is or why it's happening, though I suspect increasing wealth inequality plays a big part.
I wish I'd known what was coming, and gone to the meetings to oppose it.